In 2001, South Korea had 21.57 million workers
who worked an average of 50.4 hours per week. Total working hours
per week were 1,087,220,000 worker-hours. In 2011, South Korea had
24.25 million workers who worked an average of 43.9 hours per week.
Total working hours per week were 1,064,310,000 worker-hours. During
this ten-year period, employment increased by 12.3 percent, average
working hours decreased by 12.8 percent, and total worker-hours per
week decreased by 2.1 percent. Basically, this describes the change
from a six-day to a five-day work week. These numbers come from the
Korea Labor and Society Institute.

“The
labor market now has more people working fewer hours in less stable
jobs,” wrote reporter Ryu Yi-geun.

“Since
the implementation of the five-day workweek, total working hours
have decreased while number of jobs steadily increased, showing
that a decline in working hours led to an increase in jobs.

Korea
Labor and Society Institute (KLSI) issued a report on the economically
active population on August 28. According to the
data, the total number
of workers in Korea increased 12.3% from 21.57 million in 2001
to 24.24 million in 2011.

During
the same period, the weekly total working hours fell from 1.8722
billion to 1.6431 billion.
This new phenomenon
is thought
to be a result of a 12.8% decline in working hours per
person from 50.4 hours per week to 43.9 hours per week.

Hwang
Soo-kyung of the Korea Development Institute (KDI) said, “Aggregate
demand (number of labor force multiplied by working hours
per person)
in the labor market has decreased since the end of last
year. The increase in employment may be attributable to
the reduction
in working hours,” she
said.

It
seems that the implementation of five-day workweek (40 hours per
week) was critical in shortening working
hours,
which then
resulted
in higher employment. Statistics from KLSI show that
in the case of a 10% decrease in working hours, there is
a corresponding
9.7% increase in employment.

“Since
the five-day workweek effect is wearing out, we need to find a
new way to reduce working
hours. We should expand the five-day workweek targets
to work places with fewer than five employees, and legally prohibit
overtime surpassing
52 hours,” suggested Kim Yu-seon from KDI.

Presently,
only a little more than half of workers (53.5%) are
the privileged targets of the five-day workweek (according
to
a data
from last year August). Also, 21.8% of workers
(3.8 million) work overtime (longest to be 52 hours
per week
by law).

But
there are drawbacks of expanding employment by reducing working
hours. The growth of part-time
employment
is
one of the most
evident defects.
During the last decade, the number of part-time workers
has increased from 0.81 million (6.6% of all wage
earners) in 2002 to 1.7 million (9.7%)
last year, despite the decline of temporary workers.
Part-time and unskilled workers have been used by
companies seeking to fill up
the reduced working hours. Hwang said, “While
the enforcement of the five-day workweek opened more
jobs, we must acknowledge the
fact that the number of short-time workers has
also grown.”

Low
growth rate despite a recent job boom can be explained in a similar
context. Employment
in jobs
that require
highly skilled
employees
such as manufacturing business is decreasing
while employment in jobs with comparatively low value-added
service industry such
as health and welfare is increasing. Along with
this, the change in the labor market supply is also
critical. A person in Ministry
of Strategy and Finance claimed, “One of the reasons
why employment keeps rising despite the low growth
rate is because older
people are starting to participate in the labor market.”